In reviewing the news of the day, we have been accustomed to think of only one or two more eminent prelates suffering under the lash of persecution. The truth is, that the whole Church suffered. The persecution was as cruel as an age which does not permit the shedding of blood would tolerate. The bishops were crushed with fines on account of each act which they performed of their spiritual office. Such fines they refused to pay, lest they should acknowledge the justice of their condemnation. Their movable property, accordingly, was seized and sold at auction, and they themselves were immured in the prisons, where they were mixed up with felons condemned to the same labors, and designated, like them, by numbers. It was all in vain. Nothing could shake their constancy. At Berlin was erected a sort of ecclesiastical tribunal, which arrogated to itself the power of deposing from sees, and which actually pretended to depose the Archbishop of Posen, the Bishop of Paderborn, the Prince-Bishop of Breslau, and several other prelates. The fortresses of Germany were filled with priests, whose only crime was that they _obeyed God rather than men_. The public ways were crowded with priests who had been deprived, afterwards _interned_, and finally banished. Numerous religious people, both men and women, were in the like sad position, thronging the road of exile. The people, in tears, escorted these victims of heathenish rage. They chanted, as they went, the psalm, “_Miserere_,” and the canticle, “_Wir sind ini waren Christenthum_” (“we are in true Christianity”), until they reached the railway depots. The Prussian gensd’armes, who were often no more than two or three in number, were astonished to find that they could so easily conduct their prisoners, whom thousands and tens of thousands of other men, the greater number of whom were veteran soldiers, accompanied, as they passed, expressing their regrets and good wishes.